Hundreds of helmeted police swarmed the site of a pro-Palestinian protest at the University of California at Los Angeles early on Thursday, firing flash bangs, arresting defiant demonstrators and dismantling their encampment.

The pre-dawn police crackdown at UCLA marked the latest flashpoint in mounting tensions on U.S. college campuses, where protests over Israel’s war in Gaza have led to student clashes with each other and with law enforcement.

“I’m a student here. I’m an English major,” one student said to television cameras, as police dragged him away. “Please don’t fail us. Don’t fail us.”

Live TV footage showed officers taking down tents, tearing apart barricades and removing the encampment, while arrested protesters sat with their hands restrained behind their backs with zip-ties.

  • Rentlar@lemmy.ca
    621·
    6 months ago

    UCLA CRACKDOWN CAME DAY AFTER VIOLENT CLASH

    UCLA had canceled classes for the day on Wednesday following a violent clash between the encampment’s occupants and a group of masked counter-demonstrators who mounted a surprise assault late Tuesday night on the tent city.

    The occupants of the camp, set up last week, had remained mostly peaceful before the melee, in which both sides traded blows and doused each other with pepper spray.

    It’s an excellent analogue to what’s going on in West Bank and Gaza. Violent Israeli settlers attack a peaceful Palestian camp, there is resistance to the aggression, then the big guns arrive to defend the Israelis and do the rest of the work to raid, displace, arrest and/or kill the Palestinian side.